Graduating at the Wrong Time

I know I’m not the only one out there hurting. I’m in desperate need of work. I will take just about anything. I’m one of the approximately 10% without a job.

I graduated at one of the worst times in the past thirty years. That 90% who have a job are holding on to it tenaciously. There seem to be very few jobs open. I had the bad luck to graduate college at a time when the economy has sunk very low indeed. Right into the crapper.

I’m currently selling off some of my more valuable and expendable belongings. It’s really a shame, but I can’t for the life of me find a job. I had two interviews earlier this week. I only need a summer job, but since summer is half over, I was forced to lie through my teeth and tell them I needed a job while I awaited a real career job.

I’m one of the lucky ones, I suppose. I actually have a bank account with money in it. However, every cent of that (and a lot more besides) is bespoken. I’m going to graduate school. Like many other people I graduated with, I’ve decided to try to ride out this storm by spending another year in school. Sure, I will be in debt now (I had no undergraduate debt), but I will have a master’s degree and I will have another year for the economy to straighten itself out. By next fall, the prospects may be much, much better. It’s a terrifying prospect, to eat through all of my life’s savings and then some.

But I want to do it and I’m taking the chance. I’m going to be going back to England for a year-long MA program in Publishing at Kingston University, just outside London. I first saw their program about a year ago and daydreamed about it. I didn’t think it would actually happen. A year on and it’s come to fruition. I’m working on getting my visa at the moment. I need to change my flight and I need to gather together the funds (you have to prove that you have a certain amount of money in order to get a visa).

I leave September 15 or 16th. Back to the U.K. I can only hope that I love it as much this time as I did two years ago (God, two years ago!).

And after a year of hard work getting my master’s degree, then what? Only time will tell. My hope is to get a job there at least for a few years. I may even try to stick around long enough for the 2012 Olympics. Of course, the career I’m going into is not very lucrative, but I’ll have to get by the best I can. I will make sacrifices to be able to watch the Olympics in person. Of course I’m going to return to the U.S. sometime. I may even find that I have trouble making ends meet in London, in which case it’s back to the good old U.S. of A., getting a publishing job somewhere stateside. That is my ultimate plan; I want to work my way up and be an agent and locate myself anywhere I choose. Maybe I will locate myself right back here in Cecil County. I do love this place!

So, does this qualify as t.m.i.?

 

Critiquing the Critique

As some around these parts will know, I am an avid writer. I’ve been writing creatively ever since I learned how to spell. I always felt the compunction to express myself by creating stories. My main motive in writing is the enjoyment I get out of it, but my end goal is to become published. It’s an extremely difficult thing to do–the selection process is extremely rigorous and has as much to do with luck as with skill. Still, I believe my work is good enough to be published, especially considering some of the crap that gets published.

I’m part of a creative writing message board, particularly the “historical writing” corner of it. Generally, I like it there; I’ve learned a ton from reading the posts, asking questions, and posting my work for critique. Like with all things, you have to balance all the critiques.

But right now, I’m extremely irritated about a series of posts. I posted a few hundred words for some critique. The first few posters did a line-by-line and were very helpful. Then someone posted that they didn’t think the voice was authentic for my time and place. I rolled my eyes. What the hell does this person know about it? So I posted a polite reply.

I know the time period while she, by her own admission, didn’t. She asked what time it was, but came up with approximately the right time period anyway. I have researched that time period. I have read plenty of the words spoken (actually WRITTEN–there’s a big difference between what people write and what they would say) directly by these people, even some of the words spoken by this exact person. My main character was a real person and she left some of her own voice in the form of trial briefs. The problem is that these were written by a lawyer, so her voice is diluted. Further complicating things, everyone in my story would have spoken in French. I have to approximate what they said in English.

I did this in several ways. Nicole was a relatively uneducated young woman, impetuous and flippant. She believes herself to be rather dumb though she isn’t. She was also a prostitute. I’ve read the trial briefs and tried to decipher how much of it was Nicole and how much of it was her lawyer. The result is a relatively simple cadence and diction. Of course the people critting my work haven’t read all of it, but other characters speak in very different voices. 

It seems that because she doesn’t speak like a Victorian lady, her voice is not authentic and “too 21st-century”. What the hell? No one in the 21st century speaks like she does, not even me, and I’m weird! By the way, I’m the same age now that she was in the story (and in reality) in 1784.

I can be right all I want, but it doesn’t matter if people perceive it as wrong. Well, only this one person, as far as I can tell, has this opinion. A few other people posted “helpful suggestions” like “Read Dickens”, but they were just jumping on the bandwagon. I’ve read plenty of Victorian literature (though, oddly enough, no Dickens) and can approximate a fair facsimile of their speech. In fact, when writing this story from other perspectives, I used very strong voices with very strongly Victorian cadences. But this is not Nicole’s world and not her manner of speech. I made a decision on how her voice would sound, and it’s a simple, decidedly NOT Victorian voice, as it should not be.

I’ve found before that on this board, the historical people, while generally very kind and helpful, love to peck at you. They pick out one thing from whatever work you post and tell you how wrong and misguided it is, generally on the premise that it isn’t historical. This without–generally–knowing too much about the period but believeing that they do. With other iterations of my particular work, I’ve been taken to task for things they pooh-poohed as unhistorical–but those things were lifted right out of the first-hand account of the character in question!

I can’t believe every reader is like that. I attempt to be extremely accurate and I don’t appreciate people proving how damn smart they are by pointing out anything they believe might be WRONG OH MY GOD! Most readers don’t have the ability or the desire to call me out. Hopefully they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt because I do know what I’m writing about.

 

Make It or Break It Again

This guy is fantastically hilarious. At about 2:00 he does a summary of the first episode of Make It or Break It, and it’s one of the funniest things I have ever seen. This guy really knows about gymnastics–cowboyed knees, tucked Tsukahara, the extreme danger of moving the vault board. Anyway, it’s HILARIOUS. Warning, though, the entire video may NOT BE APPROPRIATE. In fact, er, it’s entirely inappropriate. The part about Make It or Break It isn’t too bad.

 

The Sordid Tale of Callie the Cat

My cat, Callie, had a regular checkup at the veterinarian on Saturday. I had to do the unenviable work of shoving her into the pet taxi–which she absolutely hates to no end. She fights and scratches and acts as though I’ve betrayed her in the worst way. I managed to get her into her box and into the vet by 9:00. She got her shots and I came home with flea medicine and some pills for her. On the way home, I let her out of the pet taxi and she climbed all over me. She liked to stay on my lap (as I drove) and put her feet on the door to look out the window. The movement of the car threw her easily, but she was draped over my arm so I held her steady. It was very cute. As soon as I let her out of the car at home, though, she ran off. She usually does that because she’s just that angry about being taken to the vet.

In the morning, I found her laying down outside on a rug that my brother had lain out on the basement doors. I gave her a little whistle to come inside and get her milk and breakfast, but she wouldn’t move. So I went to pick her up and bring her in, and she yowled horribly. I set her back down and realized she had a large wound on her haunches, right at the base of her tail (she probably got in a fight with some other critter). She didn’t want to move at all and she barely wanted me to look at the wound, no less try to move the hair out of the way or clean it. She had some milk, but then she disappeared again and didn’t come back until the evening. She was walking very gingerly and was sitting down like an old lady. She was also oozing puss from the wound on her back end. It was pretty ugly.

I let it be for the next day. She stayed outside, mostly, because I didn’t really want to carry her inside (and because she was still oozing quite a bit of puss). By the end of the day, however, she was acting very very weak and she hadn’t had anything to eat of drink in two days except for a little milk and a little cheese. I was (maybe unduly) worried about her, but there was nothing I could do to help her. She wouldn’t let me touch her. She wouldn’t eat anything.

So at about 9:00 p.m., I got very worried about her, so worried I felt that I needed to take her to the vet right away. I was worried about waiting until the morning. In retrospect, she probably would have been fine until the morning. But I called all the local vets and finally ended up having to go a 24-hour place about twenty minutes away. I wrapped up the cat in a towel and put her int he car. This wouldn’t have worked if she weren’t so weak. I carried her in in the towel, too. She was dripping pus and it got all over me. Very gross.

I had to wait and wait and wait. They  wouldn’t let me be with her, which I really regret. She must have been so scared, scared out of her wits. She has a very strong bond of trust with me and would have been far happier with me nearby. Finally, at around 10:30, I got her back. It turns out if cost $350! I just about had a heart attack. I cried a little when I got home because I don’t have that kind of money. But as it was, I couldn’t do anything. I’d made the choice to get her taken care of right away. They cleaned the wound, gave her antibiotics and a shot of fluids because she hadn’t eaten of drank much for two days. When she was finally handed back to me, she was utterly traumatized, poor thing. I felt awful for putting her through the ordeal. I felt awful about the money.

She stayed in all night (an unusual occurrence) and seemed much better in the morning. This was yesterday. She seemed to have much more energy and vigor and the wound seemed better. She’s been steadily improving ever since. I just had to give her the pills from the vet a few days ago PLUS the antibiotic pill. She is still a little pissed at me for shoving two and half pills down her throat. But, she’ll get over it. The wound is still healing, but she’s improving quickly and is more and more her normal, talkative, rambunctious self.

Okay, that’s not a “sordid” tale, but a tale nonetheless.

 

Epic Fail

Last night, the tv show “Make it or Break it” premiered on ABC Family. If you saw it last night . . . my condolences.

It isn’t as though I had very high hopes about this tv show. Gymnastics is always misrepresented in some way. Stick It actually was not too horrible. They did actual real elite gymnastics. But there is a point where “suspension of disbelief” just doesn’t cover it. As a writer, I know how hard it is to get these things right, but at a certain point the epic fail-ness becomes unforgivable.

Gymnastics problems:

1. “found in a playground”–What, is she Nadia or something? Seriously. And no one, NO ONE goes from training at the YMCA to going to nationals in a few days.

2.Tucked Tsukahara. Seriously? Seriously?! A tucked Tsuk? And you expect that vault to get you to nationals? You won’t even test elite if that’s all you can do. You’ll be stuck back in level 9 or 10, at best.

3. Moving the beatboard in front of the vault. Seriously?! Does the “mean girl” want to kill Emily? Because crashing into the vault has proven fatal in the past, and at the least she would be very badly injured. She would have broken her legs at the least. She would not have jumped up and done another vault. Trust me.

4. Cliches. Bolemia, bitchiness . . .

5. Money. Not only do gymnasts NOT make money doing gymnastics–maybe a little, but certainly not a fortune–but their families are usually in huge debt to pay for their daughters’ gymnastics. It is not cheap. Only two or three gymnasts have ever made real money off of gymnastics, and that was after success at the Olympics.

6. Leotard. Hey, Emily, 1976 called. It wants its leotard back.

7. Those girls do not look like gymnasts. Period. End of story. None of them could pass as gymnasts. Nastia is a skinny bitch as far as gymnasts go, and she could break Emily over her knees. Being thin won’t cut it in gymnastics, you need actual muscles.

8. Team nationals. Er, what?? Everything but worlds and the Olympics are purely individual events.

The story

1. Ooooh, soap opera! Deliciously bad.

2. OMG, DJ TANNER! I kind of flipped to see her on this show.

3. Mary Sue much? A cookie-cutter heroine with every problem in the book. Emily feels out of place, no father, has to work hard, etc.

4. I just don’t care . . .

So, I’ll keep watching, for the lulz. But it’s not a great show and its so far from being a good representation of gymnastics that its sickening. Like I said, though . . . . LULZ.

 

Comtesse de La Motte

Hi, all.

I moved this post to my brand new blog, “Queen’s Ransom: The Incredible True Story of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.”

It’s HERE.

 

Stupid YouTube

So, this post was going to be post number 7 in my montage series, BUT YouTube has removed the audio from several of my videos without notifying me of the fact (jerks). I’m not entirely sure for how long my montages have been pointless (because without the music–that specific music–the montages are nothing at all). I have gotten notices that my videos had copyrighted material, but they just put ads up on my video. The ads gave the viewer a link to a place they could buy an mp3 of the song. That was fine by me. What is NOT fine is that they took off the audio and left me with crap, all without saying anything.

Look, YouTube. No one is making any money off of this. It’s just a fun, interesting way to see gymnastics. And to the people who made the copyright claims, you’re just mean-spirited. All of us montage-makers take a lot of time and effort to produce these fun videos for the pleasure of other fans and you just ruin it. It doesn’t seem at all fair.

Anyway, my rant here is done. Montages were an amazing thing and great fun. YouTube is just a spoil-sport.

 

Graduation

I finally graduated cum laude with a BA in Communications. Boy am I glad! I wrote a lengthy rant the other day, but really it isn’t appropriate to be posted. I try not to be “click-happy”. It’s too easy to write something in a fit of choler, post it, and then regret it five minutes later. The writing of it was cathartic, but the posting of it would be pointless in the main.

In any case, I’m understandably psyched to be finished with my undergraduate career. I have one more year of grad school. I must admit, it is extremely tempting to get a real job, make real money, live in my own real place (i.e. a place without ridiculous roommates), et cetera. But with my degree, there weren’t any jobs available that I really wanted. The economy is bad, too, so it might have been hard to get a real job. Above all, the temptation to return to London was irresistible. It’s only one year, I get to be in London, and at the end I should be looking at a job I can really really enjoy. I will be going for my MA in publishing, with the goal of becoming an acquisitions editor or a literary agent. I will probably at least start out in London, but I do ultimately plan to return to the US. I’ll to work somewhere besides NYC.

In any case, graduation was fun. I told my parents I wanted to go to my graduation ceremonies and they asked, “Why?” and “Do we have to go?” Of course they had to go. The University of Maryland had two ceremonies for each grad, one for the entire university and one for each department/college. I went to both. The big ceremony was very assembly-line. We weren’t given much information at all about what was going on. It was enjoyable anyway. Leon Panetta was out speaker and gave a wonderful address. They called each college to stand to cheer, so we all did. It was just fun to be part of the mass of graduates.

The next morning was the Communications graduation ceremony. It was 9:00, which was pretty dang early. I literally had to Google it to find out when I was meant to show up because, again, we weren’t given much information. It was a lot better-run than the main commencement, however. And it was much smaller. They called each graduate’s name and we all got a poster of images of the campus. Our diplomas are mailed to us later. My parents and one of my brothers came. The weather was gorgeous. All in all, it worked out to be a very successful ceremony.

From there, we went straight to the house I lived in and packed up all my stuff. My parents were moving at warp speed. I was trying to pack up the last few things. They wanted to take out the bed and I had to stop them so I could get off the sheets and blankets! I was like, “Cool it for a minute, guys!” We got everything outta there in record time. I wasn’t sad about that, let me tell you. I was so damn fed up with that place and those roommates. I got a note that morning that my roommate was moving out on Monday (today) and expected a check for the water utility (which he had been paying late, for which we had gotten a shut-off notice). This was Friday, today is Memorial Day. So in other words, I had no chance to mail him the check, since I didn’t have my checkbook with me. That would be his fault. I’ll send the check to the address there, hoping it will get forwarded to him.

Summer is ahead of me. Tomorrow, I really need to start looking for a job. I should be able to get a loan for all I need, but every penny counts. I need to be able to save a couple thousand dollars this summer. That will make me feel much much better. I have no undergrad debt, but I want to be in as little debt as possible, obviously. Debt is huge trouble, as everyone has finally begun to realize as of late.

Ah, well, anyway, I regress. Here are a few lovely photos from graduation.

 

“Kiss and Cry” for Gymnastics

As if we needed more evidence that the FIG is made up of fools.

The FIG [International Gymnastics Federation--it's official title is in French, hence the changing of initials] has decided to add a “kiss and cry” area to gymnastics competitions.

Dear God in heaven, what will these people think of next?

For those of you who may not be familiar with the term “kiss and cry”, it means the place where the athlete goes and sits with a coach in a box-like area with cameras trained on them and advertisements in the background. There, the athlete gets his or her score and either gets a kiss from his or her coach, or cries. Hence “kiss” and “cry”. You might be more familiar with this from ice skating competitions. It’s also used in other disciplines of gymnastics (rhythmic and trampoline, for example). Artistic gymnastics, which is what most people mean when they say gymnastics, has never had anything like this.

The details on the implementation are scarce, but it seems completely impossible. First of all, gymnastics is unlike ice skating or rhythmic gymnastics because there is not one central performance area with one athlete going at a time. Gymnastics is a four ring circus (or six, in the case of MAG, men’s artistic gymnastics); during most competitions, someone is competing on each event at any given time. So how could they possibly stop a competition for each athlete to sit in the kiss and cry to get their score? It’s totally impractical. In team gymnastics, it’s simply impossible. Each team does twelve routines. The competition would take six hours! They’d need to put cots down on the floor so the athletes could get some sleep, because it would be a long competition.

Aside from artistic gymnastics being a four ring circus, it is also a heavily mental sport. Along with being physically more demanding than any other sport, it’s also mentally daunting. In between routines, gymnasts need to keep their muscles warm, they need to mentally prepare (perhaps by relaxing for a few minutes with music if need be), and a lot of times they need to gather up their gear and rush to their next event. Now the FIG expects them to interrupt all of that so the gymnasts can sit in front of the camera and wait for their scores.

And lets be honest, that won’t be nearly as interesting as the FIG wants it to be. Gymnasts aren’t a very emotive bunch. It’s kind of a rule to keep things to yourself. Almost every gymnast knows the correct responses to give and the correct emotion to display, if they display any at all. Oooh, it would be hilarious to see the old-school Soviet gymnasts in the kiss and cry. They’d break the camera with their intense stare. And, oooh to see Khorkina in a kiss and cry! That would be gold! But I cringe to think of 14-year old Kerri Strug or someone like Carly Patterson in a kiss and cry–cringe-worthy (because of her shyness) and boring (because of her blandness), respectively.

But I digress.

Apparently the FIG is going to sell ads on the walls of the kiss and cry. There’s a surprise, it’s for money.

I honestly don’t know what these idiots are thinking. I don’t think any governing body of any sport has ever actively tried to ruin their sport, but the FIG is currently doing a wonderful job of just that. This is the latest in a string of horrendous decisions: eliminating compulsories, raising the age limit to 16, ridiculous Codes of Points, stabbing the artistic part of artistic gymnastics in the heart,  getting rid of the 10.0, the tie-breaking rules at the Olympics, and now this. It’s unfathomable. Who the hell are these people? It’s beyond belief how foolish these people are. I wish I knew how they could be removed from their positions, because they’re like cancer eating away at the sport.

Here is what needs to be done:

1. Scrap the current code. Seriously. Reverse it to about 1995-6, when artistry/execution was balanced with difficulty.

2. Lower the age limit back to 15. All that raising the age limit accomplishes is the exclusion of a lot of gymnasts at the peak of their abilities.

3. Tell Bruno Grandi to jump off a bridge.

4. Oh, and someone please get rid of Al Trautwig, who commentates for NBC. Seriously, he’s an idiot.

 

Congrats, Shawn Johnson!

Last night I stayed up until the ungodly hour of 11:00 and watched Shawn Johnson win the mirror ball on Dancing with the Stars. I was so excited for my chica. She kept saying her gymnastics training was an impediment, but I still don’t believe it. She had the advantage of knowing how to move her body. Yes, gymnastics moves are different, but she has experience with making her body do just what she asks of it. Plus she has the flexibility (ironically she was always disliked by some in the gymnastics community because of her lack of flexibility) and the gymnastics skills. Gymnastics helped her in a lot of ways.

Not that she didn’t work hard, improve, and totally deserve to win. Gilles was great, too, and Melissa was very god, but I think Shawn really proved herself in the freestyle. As far as I’m concerned, that separates the girls from the men–or whatever, lol. She proved she had what it takes. She kicked butt.

She was very cute when she won. Of course, she inherently unable to be anything but cute. She and Mark really did believe that Gilles would win. She closed her eyes to steal herself for his name to be announced as winner, and both she and Mark covered their faces with their hands when they won–a sign of surprise and disbelief. Oh, and props to Gilles. He was amazingly gracious to Shawn and I think he was really sincere about loving the experience and being happy for Shawn. Most times when people say that, they seem to feel the exact opposite, but I do Gilles was honest.

I also saw Shawn on the morning talk shows this morning. I’m hoping the experience of winning something again might give Shawn the motivation to go back to gymnastics. Everyone has slowly been coming to the conclusion that she’s done with gymnastics, but I got a good vibe from her. She said she’d go back to the gym. She’s been saying that for a while, but she’s also said she’ll wait to see “if her heart is in it”. She said that again, but it seemed tacked on. Before, it was a way out so she could keep people hanging; now it seemed more like a possibility but not an inevitability that she would be done with gymnastics. I really want her to continue on. She could do so much more, she still has a lot of years in her. And, frankly, she gets a lot of disrespect as a one-hit wonder (which isn’t fair). I’d love to see her prove ‘em wrong.

Anyway, here are Shawn’s last two dances, one from Monday, one from last night’s finale.